If you’re serious about learning Japanese, I’m sure you will eventually either want to or need to be able to type in Japanese on your computer. Typing in Japanese is done with software called an IME (Input Method Editor), which allows you to type Japanese phonetically (romaji) and have the your typing automatically converted to […]

If you’re following me on Twitter, you’ll know that I recently went to Tokyo for the weekend. Living in Nagoya, I frequently get hit with the urge to get out and do something new, but one of the biggest blocks to doing so is the cost of travel. Trains are either slow (local), or expensive (shinkansen), and busses are slow and uncomfortable.

But recently I came across a very interesting deal the JR Tokai Tours offers: ぷらっとこだま (Puratto Kodama). I’m not the first to blog about this discounted ticket program, but it really is a great offer and deserves repeating, and I’ll also elaborate on things a little, since I actually tried out the program myself.

Oh the hardships, the ordeals I endure for the sake of this blog. But someone had to do it, someone had to stomach 5 whole pizzas in the course of researching a completely legitimate, informative blog post.

(Translation: Lloyd used his blog as an excuse to order delivery pizza 5 times in one month.)…

Last fall, I purchased an iPhone 3GS through Japan’s official distributor for the device, Softbank, along with a two-year phone contract. But since my credit card is based in the US, iTunes kindly directed me to the US store for all my purchases. I was excited to download Pandora (which I had heard many great […]

The other day I finally got around to visiting a place that I’ve wanted to check out for some time: a cat cafe.

No, there’s no relationship to maid cafes or anything like that. It’s not even really a place to get a cup of coffee (though they do offer a small selection food and drinks). It’s a “cafe” more in the sense of an internet cafe and the system is almost identical, except instead of a room full of computers you buy time to go into a room full of cats.

Meow, as a cat lover this was purrfectly right up my alley (sorry, but I wanted to get all the puns out of the way early), so I went to check it out one morning…

I switched my provider to Softbank from AU at the start of this month so that I could finally get on the iPhone bandwagon that I had been hearing so much about. I knew it would be a cool device but it has so far exceeded every single expectation I held for it. I run down my battery into the 20-30% range everyday from almost constant use (I even use it as an alarm clock at night) and have in two short weeks already spilled over to 6 pages of apps (even though I turned some off with BossPrefs). But, enough fanboy rant… you came here to read about apps…

Sharemo is Japanese ingenuity at its best. It’s a new kind of website, dubbed “social sharing”, where people can list things they have but don’t need around the house, and borrow or take similarly listed items from other people across the country.

It was about one year ago that I first discovered this beautiful machine at a local ゲーセン (“game center” or arcade), and I fell in love at first sight. Those big, beautiful buttons, the soothing cyber-techno atmosphere… I felt like I was dancing in the future, with my hands. This was it. This was the music game to rule all music games, it was perfect.